Marin Alsop really is good
Mar. 7th, 2008 11:53 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
bunrabTonight's Baltimore Symphony Orchestra concert was quite good. I've never been that enthused about any of the Leonora overtures (which, let me remind you, are to the opera Fidelio, as there is no Leonora opera) but the performance of the L#3 was good. It was the Christopher Rouse flute concerto that really surprised me - I was prepared to not like a dissonant modern (1993) piece. And parts of it were dissonant. But parts were beautiful. One of the things Rouse (who was there tonight, and took a bow) had said was that when he was writing it, he heard about the 2 kids who murdered another kid, that had recently happened then, and so he turned it into an elegy. And indeed, the 4th and 5th movements are as stirring and powerful as any elegy or requiem in the classical literature. He knows how to use those chords, you know the ones, where the notes and the tone color all say death and hope - prayers for the dead and the hope of resurrection. Whether or not you believe in any sort of resurrection, or prayers, has nothing to do with it - those chords mean "pray for the dead and hope for resurrection." Well, they were done quite powerfully. The flute winds in and around and through there, there are lots of bassoon solos as well, as there must be in any requiem (think of Brophy's Diskworld Symphony), then the 4th movement ends with a bunch of crashing and dissonance that nonetheless makes sense, and the 5th movement starts softly, with more of a flute melody and those death-and-hope chords behind it, building, but then fading again, and the concerto ends with just the sustained flute and a very soft chord in which the bassoons were primary.
The Beethoven 5 was great. Started off at a slightly brisker tempo than the one in the template in my head, which made it sound fresher. (We all have that for the warhorses, don't we? Whichever recording we heard over and over as a kid, that's what that piece sounds like in our heads forever.) And Alsop did a signing after the concert, of the new CD release of the BSO doing Dvorak. She is very chatty and personable while signing.
We ate a bit too much tortellini at Sabatino's afterward.
Oh, and would you believe, I wore a dress to this concert? Granted, it was with tights and black lace-up boots, as though I were 25, instead of the stockings and heels people my age are supposed to wear, but still, a dress! I bought a couple of them last month - one for this summer, when the Baltimore Symphonic Band tours Eastern Europe, and I want to have a dress in which I can sit at a sidewalk cafe in Vienna and look elegant. Anyway, dress, and a real coat instead of my beat-up faux ski jacket. Almost a respectable adult.
The Beethoven 5 was great. Started off at a slightly brisker tempo than the one in the template in my head, which made it sound fresher. (We all have that for the warhorses, don't we? Whichever recording we heard over and over as a kid, that's what that piece sounds like in our heads forever.) And Alsop did a signing after the concert, of the new CD release of the BSO doing Dvorak. She is very chatty and personable while signing.
We ate a bit too much tortellini at Sabatino's afterward.
Oh, and would you believe, I wore a dress to this concert? Granted, it was with tights and black lace-up boots, as though I were 25, instead of the stockings and heels people my age are supposed to wear, but still, a dress! I bought a couple of them last month - one for this summer, when the Baltimore Symphonic Band tours Eastern Europe, and I want to have a dress in which I can sit at a sidewalk cafe in Vienna and look elegant. Anyway, dress, and a real coat instead of my beat-up faux ski jacket. Almost a respectable adult.
